Ernst and Grassley Release FAFSA Factsheet

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) today published an FAQ-style factsheet on the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Students and families can use the one-pager as an additional resource to navigate the Biden administration’s FAFSA changes and resulting delays.  

“Instead of helping families know the true cost of college, Biden’s Department of Education wasted time on socialist schemes and taxpayer-funded handouts,” said Senator Ernst. “To help bring certainty, Senator Grassley and I are pushing the Biden administration to fix their FAFSA fiasco and ensure Iowans don’t have to sell the farm to afford college. We’ll always stand up for Iowa students, their families, and their futures.”

“Prospective college students and their families ought to have ready access to their financial aid offerings. But this year's FAFSA launch has created more headaches than it’s helped,” Grassley said. “Senator Ernst and I will continue working with the Department of Education to iron out wrinkles in the new FAFSA, so that when the time comes for young Iowans to choose their college, they’ll have the financial information they need.” 

Download the factsheet here.

Background:

The bipartisan FAFSA Simplification Act was signed into law in December 2020 to make financial aid more accessible for all students by streamlining the application process and adjusting the calculation for the student’s expected family contribution. Despite having three years to prepare for the FAFSA rollout, the application was then only accessible for sporadic periods until it became fully live nearly a week after the Jan. 1, 2024 deadline.

The form is typically accessible to students on Oct. 1 of each year, to allow for ample time to submit financial information in advance of both state and school-specific deadlines for aid eligibility. However, due to incomplete planning measures, the Department released this year’s version three months late, drastically condensing the timeline for families to submit for aid.

Ernst has worked to help students from families with small businesses and family farms in particular. In 2023, sheintroduced the Family Farm and Small Business Exemption Act to reverse recent changes to the FAFSA process that could reduce or even eliminate access to need-based student aid for farm families and small business owners. She also introduced the Student Transparency for Understanding Decisions in Education Net Terms (STUDENT) Act to give prospective students an estimate of the total amount of interest they would pay on a loan.

###